Recently, the development of a hybrid vehicle, a fuel cell vehicle, and an electric vehicle, or the like, using driving force of a motor as a part of measures against an environmental problem has been increasingly spotlighted. The vehicle as described above is generally mounted with, a power control unit (PCU) controlling electricity supplied from a driving battery (for example, a voltage of 300V) to be supplied in a desired state to a motor.
The PCU includes electrical elements such as an inverter, a smoothing condenser, a converter, and the like. Since the electrical elements generate heat while receiving electricity, a separate cooling means is necessarily required.
As the related art, Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2001-245478 (published on 7 Sep. 2001 and entitled “Cooling Apparatus of Inverter”) has disclosed an inverter in which a semiconductor module having a semiconductor element such as an insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT), or the like, and a diode embedded therein is used, and Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2008-294283 (published on 4 Dec. 2008 and entitled “Semiconductor Apparatus”) has disclosed a heat sink installed to contact a lower surface of a semiconductor element and formed, to perform heat exchange by a fluid flowing therein.
This singled-sided cooling scheme has a limitation in cooling performance, and a double-sided cooling-scheme has been devised in order to improve this problem. Since the double-sided cooling scheme is a structure in which an electrical element is inserted into a space between heat exchangers, it is preferable that conditions in which an electrical element insertion interval of the heat exchanger should be higher than a height of the electrical element and the electrical element and the heat exchanger should be compressed well in order to increase heat transfer performance of the heat exchanger are satisfied.
A heat exchanger in a double-sided cooling scheme as illustrated in FIG. 1 may be configured to include a tube 20 positioned on both surfaces of an electrical element 10 and formed to have a heat exchange medium flowing therein and tanks 30 coupled to both ends of the tube and having the heat exchange medium introduced thereinto or discharged therefrom. However, in the heat exchanger, since the electrical element should be inserted after an insertion space of the electrical element is fixed by brazing-coupling, a process of inserting the electrical element is difficult.
In addition, in the heat exchanger, when an interval between facing surfaces of the tube is widened in order to facilitate insertion of the electrical element, the electrical element and the tube are not compressed, such that heat exchange efficiency is decreased.
Therefore, there is a need to develop a heat exchanger for cooling an electrical element in which insertion of the electrical element is easy and the electrical element and the heat exchanger may be compressed well.
In addition, a module for stably mounting the heat exchanger for cooling an electrical element as described, above in a power control unit (PCU) or a hybrid, power control unit (HPCU) of a vehicle is required.